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Thursday, October 9, 2014

Teaser Thursday: The Ghost at Retreat Lake (Timeloopers #2)

The blackness squeezed in around Iris, and a dull, aching
panic set in. She couldn’t get out. For nine hours, she couldn’t get out. She
had to stay here.

In this cage.

Quiet. So, so
quiet. Nothing beyond the walls. Just quiet. Just endless time.
Never . . . never in
her life had she felt so isolated.

She sank to the
floor and crossed her legs, set her water bottle next to her.

Now what?

A soreness rose in
her throat, and she swallowed. The soreness tightened into a sting.

The machine made
sounds.

Sounds that
frightened her.

From beyond the
walls came an eerie, drawn-out moan,
almost like wind howling in slow motion. The sounds of time itself, stretching
out and warping. Going backwards.

She hated the sounds.

Her hands dipped
into her pocket and came out with her cell phone, which she clicked on. The
home screen flashed to life, blinding her for a moment.

Light! . . .
dazzling light.

She swept her phone
around the interior of the Chronos, illuminating the molded plastic interior,
the lonely corners, a subpanel, all caked with dust. Except for the floor.

Black plastic
gleamed underneath her, recently scrubbed.

She entered her
passcode and thumbed through the apps on her home screen, then opened a game—Mine Explorer.

Time to explore
some mines . . .

Eight seconds
later, she was bored again.

Zero bars of
service displayed at the top of her phone. Big surprise. She navigated to the
settings and switched to airplane mode, so it wouldn’t drain the battery
searching for a network.

Then she had
nothing else to do.

Her phone read 8:17
p.m., still keeping time off its internal clock.

Only eight hours
and fifty-eight minutes left.

She sighed and
pocketed the phone, licked her dry lips, then reached for her water—

Wait. Not yet. She already felt like she
had to pee. Better not push her luck.

She set her water
back down and pulled her knees up to her chest, closed her eyes.

And waited.

As her slow,
shallow breathing wore on, her thoughts turned to oxygen, releasing a surge of
anxiety. Her eyelids sprang open.

What if she ran out
of air?

The Chronos—a
volume six feet by three feet by three feet—contained fifty-four cubic feet of
air. She remembered from her biology class that in a sealed room, high carbon
dioxide levels would asphyxiate a person before low oxygen would.

She also remembered
an average human breathed out half a cubic foot of CO2 per hour, and
that concentrations of seven to ten percent could cause suffocation.

So that meant . . .

In nine hours, her
respiration would increase the volume of CO2 to four and a half
cubic feet out of fifty-four—just a little over eight percent.

Well, shit.

She’d have to hold
her breath.

Should have thought of that before, moron.

All at once her
lungs constricted, like she’d been dunked in cold water. Her diaphragm heaved,
but pulled in nothing, stiffened by panic. She couldn’t get enough air. She was
going to suffocate in here . . .

Breathe.

Just breathe.

She forced herself to relax, forced her
lungs to open, to take slow, calming breaths. She had enough air. If she
relaxed her body and didn’t panic,
she could make it through the nine hours. There was enough air.

She
would be fine.

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